OUT-3709: drop placeholder errorMessage on stale PENDING flip

[SandipBajracharya]

Summary

• flipStalePendingToFailed previously stamped errorMessage: 'Stale PENDING claim — worker did not finalise in time' onto qb_sync_logs when recovering stale PENDING rows.
• SyncService.intiateSync reads currentLog.errorMessage when reporting to Sentry on the final retry attempt (sync.service.ts:479), so that placeholder was being surfaced as if it were the real exception — misleading on-call (e.g. ACCOUNTING-SYNC-3M).
• Drop the placeholder. The flip still sets status: FAILED and category: OTHERS; the first retry that actually throws will populate errorMessage with the real reason via updateFailedSyncLog.

Out of scope

• Silent early-return paths in processInvoiceDeleted / processInvoiceVoided (!invoiceSync.customer) that never overwrite errorMessage on retry. With this change, those rows now surface null in Sentry instead of the misleading placeholder — uninformative, but no longer misleading. Cleanup deferred to a follow-up ticket.

Test plan

• Existing unit + integration tests still pass (yarn test).
• Lint + prettier clean (yarn lint:check, yarn prettier:check).
• Manual: in next stale-recovery cycle, verify newly flipped rows have error_message = NULL and the next retry either fills it with a real exception or flips to SUCCESS.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[linear-code]

OUT-3709

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
quickbooks-sync	Building		May 11, 2026 1:25pm
quickbooks-sync (dev)	Ready	Preview, Comment	May 11, 2026 1:25pm

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR removes the hardcoded errorMessage placeholder ('Stale PENDING claim — worker did not finalise in time') from the flipStalePendingToFailed bulk update in SyncLogService. Because SyncService#intiateSync reads currentLog.errorMessage when reporting to Sentry on the final retry, the placeholder was surfacing as the apparent root cause, masking the real exception.

• The one-line deletion leaves errorMessage as NULL on freshly-flipped rows; the first retry that actually throws will populate it via updateFailedSyncLog, and the Sentry report will carry the genuine reason.
• The PR author notes that "silent early-return" paths in processInvoiceDeleted/processInvoiceVoided may now surface null in Sentry instead of the placeholder, which is acknowledged as a follow-up item.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge — a single-line deletion that removes a misleading placeholder; no logic paths are altered and the database column already accepts NULL.

The change is a targeted one-line removal with no new code paths introduced. Flipped rows will carry NULL for errorMessage until a real retry exception writes the genuine reason, which is strictly more informative than the old placeholder. The PR author has correctly identified and scoped the residual gap (silent early-return paths) as a separate follow-up.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
src/app/api/quickbooks/syncLog/syncLog.service.ts	Removes the misleading errorMessage placeholder from the flipStalePendingToFailed bulk update, so flipped rows carry null until a real exception populates the field on retry.

Sequence Diagram

sequenceDiagram
    participant Cron as Cron / syncFailedRecords
    participant SLS as SyncLogService
    participant DB as qb_sync_logs
    participant SS as SyncService#intiateSync
    participant Sentry

    Cron->>SLS: flipStalePendingToFailed()
    SLS->>DB: "UPDATE SET status=FAILED, category=OTHERS"
    Note over DB: errorMessage = NULL (placeholder removed)

    Cron->>SS: retry stale row
    alt retry throws real error
        SS->>DB: updateFailedSyncLog(realError)
        Note over DB: errorMessage = real exception
        SS->>Sentry: "captureMessage(errorMessage = real exception)"
    else retry succeeds
        SS->>DB: "status = SUCCESS"
    end

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_{Reviews (1): Last reviewed commit: "fix(OUT-3709): drop placeholder errorMes..." | Re-trigger Greptile}